Transcript
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Hello, I'm Rachel Richards and welcome to teenagers untangled the audio hug where we use research by experts and our own experience to discuss everything and anything to do with parenting teenagers.
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Hi, there, I'm Susie Azli min dfulness coach, mindful therapist and musician, and mother of three teenagers, two
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As a parenting coach and mother of teens, I've of them a twin.
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seen the transformative power of getting people together to share ideas and support each other. So here we are, welcome to our club. This time, we're going to talk about the enormous stress of parenting and how we can better deal with it. But let's start with our nuggets of wisdom that we gained this week. Go on, Susie, what do you think?
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Well, my eldest is doing A level mocks, so his final exams. He's doing one right now. And he is not the biggest fan of mindfulness.
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Because well no, he's he's realized now actually, but to start with it was, you know, that old waffle? Yeah. And I taught him very many years ago about the idea that when we're in a stressful situation, particularly an exam, our brain sometimes switches off, and we can't think so we go blank, we all experienced that. And what we do is, if we don't know these, this little tip, we try and think and think and think and think and our brain goes, is it going into fight flight freeze, we can't think anymore, the thinking part of our brain is switched off, because we just need to escape, or do whatever the fight flight freeze symptoms. And what we need to do is the opposite, we need to calm our system down. So breathing is the best way to do that. So breathe for a minute, just a minute. And then it tells our system, we trick our system. And our nervous system goes oh, oh, she's breathing calmer again.
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Oh, oh, the danger must have passed, right? And then it's able the thinking part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, switches back on again, because the danger thinks the danger has passed, we can reflect and think again, and you can do your exam.
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Oh, I love that.
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And so I was in the car yesterday. And he was doing his physics a level, which he's really not enjoying. It's really, really hard. And I said, Don't forget about the breathing and physics. If you're, you know, if you get stuck and your mind switches off. And I asked him today, I said, Well, how did you get on in physics? And did you did you have to use the breathing to come up? And he went? Yeah, twice? Did it help?
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Yeah. And he doesn't, he really didn't believe in it to start with he knows. It knows it helps and works now. But he so for those of you don't know what I'm talking about, you literally breathe for a minute, just calm breaths. And maybe you need two minutes, but a minute should be enough. And you're you're bringing your system back into balance.
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There's an app that was produced, I think, off the top of my head, it was by the Navy, which is something called breathe something. I'll put it into the podcast notes.
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And I downloaded this the other day. And I just thought, yeah, that's gonna be rubbish. Even me, you know, and I do yoga and things like that. But somehow, I just thought, yeah, that's not really gonna work. But it has a visual. Yes. And you watch it, and you have to breathe in line with it. And in 18 breaths. I just saw how it actually works.
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It's really Yes. Right? Yes.
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System. Yes. It's amazing, actually,
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and adults, but you can do finger breathing, which is tracing around your hand as we do that. Yes. And that's, I think, for teenagers, particularly that because you're doing something you're not just breathing, how to be really helpful.
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Yeah. Which is why they have the app but you can't have an app in every No, no, I think that's a really good one a breathing, tracing around your finger.
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To digit really up, you're going up the digit breathing out, you're going down, just breathing speed.
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Yes. No, I can't. Yeah, I love that. So for me, my daughter met up with some friends in London called me to say she'd be getting back later because she wanted to have more time this doesn't happen very often doesn't see her friends that often I thought that's fantastic. Yeah, I've no problem I don't mind at all. Now, she was supposed to get a lift from
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30. But I got a panicked call to say the train had been replaced by buses. This, this didn't just happen. This was all afternoon, but she hadn't checked that and noticed it. And that would make a significant difference. In fact, she had completely missed the lift that she was supposed to have, which would mean that we as family, parents would have to take her instead of the lifts she was supposed to be in. So initially, I just thought, Oh, but I decided to focus on the fact that she had done some great things, which was, first of all, she checked in with me earlier on and tell me she was going to be later and secondly, that she called me in a panic to get some support. And I you know, she tried to help get me to help her problem solve and I, you know, we said you can do it you can do it, and she actually managed to get a result from somebody else. And she crossed London to get to a different train station, quarter train, got back late, but not so late that she missed the ride. And in the meantime, she had called the parent that was going to give her the lift and fixed it. Me so I had to do nothing. And I looked at this situation. I thought gosh, that was one of those situations where my initial response was quite irritated that this was for God's sake, you know, she should have looked at the times to completely flipping it to thinking, wow, look at what she has learned from that experience and how well she managed that.
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What a great kid. Yeah. And sometimes it's about the language we use in our own heads about our children, and, and feed back to them. So not only that, I actually explicitly said to her, wow, I'm so impressed with how you managed that really tricky situation. Ignore the other stuff. Yeah. But she's really proud. And the fact is, she's learning to cope. And I could find in the past, I would have checked those train times and things. But I thought, No, I'm not going to do that.
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Because she's old enough. But young enough, she's young enough to be at home with me where I can support her things go wrong.
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And she's old enough to try and fix this stuff herself. So it was it was a really good experience.
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And it's easily done as well as new. Brilliant, amazing,
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right. We've also had a review from Jamie Fair from America about our nuggets. Jamie described our podcast as superb and went on to say loving the show. I find it helpful, practical and real. I like the nuggets, the research and the personal stories. Keep it up.
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Yeah, that's lovely.
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Now back to stress. Libby told me that she's really struggling at the moment, she gets personal physical space, but she's always busy.
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But the mental break is almost impossible. It's very 24/7 mums zone. And when when she'd said that she then went on to minimize her own experience by seeing many moms. I know many moms are far busier and under much greater stress. Yeah, we've all done that. Haven't we all looked at our own situation and gone. Oh, yeah. But I'm moaning.
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But they've got 12 children?
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Yeah, they've got, yeah, I got help they haven't, you know, we all sit there and go? Well, I'm the bad person. Yeah.
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T his is what I work with on a daily basis. But I think the the, the narrative behind you know that we take care of ourselves as mothers or fathers, it has changed. So we recognize that we do need, you know, that great term self care.
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But it's still as an afterthought. So we will take care of ourselves, if we've done everything else first. So we'll have you know, have that do that have that luxury treat, or whatever it is that we choose to have as our self care, we'll do that. But we've got to do that, that there first. And then if there's times, which often doesn't happen, or it's half hearted, because actually, we're a bit too tired to even take care of ourselves. It's an afterthought. So it's not a priority. Whereas what needs to happen is that the self care needs to come first, because and that feels way too self indulgent still in the narrative. And like, we're, we shouldn't be doing that. First, we should be, you know, the nurturers of the others first.
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But if we take care of ourselves first, then we are better mothers were better fathers were better nurturers. Because we have more to give, you know, it's a classic, as you know, we're not reinventing the wheel.
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If we fill our buckets, we have more to give. And that flipped.
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If our bucket is empty, actually, we're probably not very good parents, because we're more reactive. We're snappy. We are giving our kids the signal that it's okay not to take care of ourselves. And we're probably not doing everything as well, we're definitely not as present as we would otherwise be. So it's a bad thing to be setting.
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So we need to change the order of it and needs to come first.
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Yeah. And on our flight, they always say put the oxygen mask on yourself.
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And we kind of know it all. It's yeah, we do. We knew we know it all. But it still hasn't trickled through.
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I saw another mother anonymously post that everyone sees her and her kids is perfect. But that it's a lie.
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And she's a breaking point. And then I just thought, Gosh, God, what it must be like to live in that life. Yeah, that's horrific.
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It's hard. Because I mean, I practice this I teach this, This is my work. And I have to practice it. And I don't always get it. Right. I will be because I'm on my own with my kids. I will be putting them first. And of course, I would do that. And but I have to remember and sort of tell myself, No, I have to take care of myself for them. Not just for me, but for them as well.
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Yeah, that's a great point. So when I wanted to look into this, I thought, You know what, let's start with how important is parenting? How how significant, you know, not to undermine it, because it actually obviously it's really important, but you know, how much of a massive impact are you having? Right? And there was a survey done in the UK after in I think it was 1946 over one week, where they interviewed 14,000 They use 14,000 detailed questionnaires of mothers to find out how they were coping with a war ravaged country, and then they continued repeatedly surveying their kids. So over 70 around 70,000 kids I they move through their lives through this time period up to the age of 70.
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Remember that amazing?
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Incredible, right? So this is a, this is the biggest study they've had of this. And they what they wanted to do was find out, basically what works and what doesn't. In terms of parenting, you know, they're like, give us the answers. Yeah.
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Right. So it's actually simpler than we think. So scientists can say with 100% certainty that certain interventions cause better outcomes, right? talking and listening to your kids. And science shows quality time, which means just quiet moments where you actually really listen and respond to them, which can be 15 minutes. Yes. That's, that's what it can take. But it has to be completely engaged, listening to them and responding to them. Making it clear that you have ambitions and you care about their future, being emotionally warm. So we can't be emotionally warm if we're complete wreck and we feeling awful ourselves. We've just reacted, yes. I'm encouraging them to read for pleasure, because we're talking about teenagers here. Maintaining a regular bedtime. Yeah, and we're all guilty of this to an extent but it helps, and taking them on excursions and exposing them to new things. That's amazing. So those are the key things that mak a difference make a difference? It's not giving them extra violin lessons. It's not no, no. I mean, it's really serious, because we all would punch ourselves for not doing things like were looking over a fence thinking they're doing this and that, and I'm not.
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Yeah, but it's not that stuff.
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Okay. And we are not supposed to be parenting alone. No, just with with this is not the way that human beings are supposed to evolve. No, and we are increasingly doing this. And we're either doing it alone, or we're in a community where like that poor woman who said, everyone thinks I'm perfect , but behind the doors, we're dying,
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we have a terrible perfectionist streak, many of us and that is really, really destructive, because we think we have to do all alone. And then we feel we can't ask for help, because that's a sign of failure.
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Yes. And it's, I remember as a young mom, standing outside the class and waiting to get my child in. And another mother said, Oh, my God, it's an absolute wreck at home.
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You know, I just I can't believe my house is such a mess. And I said, I want to. And I just thought, you know what, let's take away the stress. And I said, Everyone put your hands up if you left your house in a total mess. And they all did.
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Yeah, just said, Can we stop tidying up just before everyone comes around and making it look like our lives are perfect?
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Because going around to people's houses when they're messy? Thank you for being real,
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for being real.
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And I always say to people, this is my compliment to you. My house is a mess at the moment.
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Yeah, it's actually a compliment. So trying to support other parents is also really helpful. So because it creates a community where so we've used the another parent struggling rather than judging them, maybe say, wow, you know, that I can see that's really hard. I feel that myself sometimes or, you know, looking for local parenting cooperatives, reaching out for help. There are lots of online groups, parenting community, so Facebook has them, you know, have a search, if there's anything in particular, I saw a mother talking about how she had a child with Sen. There are so many groups you can join, you know, we don't need to do this alone. No,
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no online community is brilliant. I mean, if I was to go back and redo my parenting, I mean, there'd be lots of things I do differently, but one of them would be, would be reaching out for help. So I mean, I had to learn that when I was on my own with three small kids when they were little, and I had to learn that sometimes found that really difficult. So that was good learning, but I would do more and I would probably set up you know, looking after each other's kids and things like that. It's really easy to do and if everyone's in it's brilliant, it's absolutely
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brilliant. And also what you could do with this podcast is you could suggest it in a group or to other parents at the school that your kids are out or anything like that and just say why don't we just listen to one of these podcasts?
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See what it throws up and get together and talk about it because then it's not person it's not like I bought this problem can you fix it but it will then open up people to and presumably people are listening to the podcasts we're all on the same page we may disagree with what each other saying but it gives you a starting point to have a conversation about things and then you can go and have a cup of tea or whatever but you're
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right we're not meant to be doing it all alone but our society is created it so that we we are doing it on our own
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it's an utter nonsense so there's a national parenting helpline in the United States in the UK there's a young minds.org parents helpline which web chat I'll put these things in the the link but don't don't try and do it alone. Yeah.
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Brilliant. Susie, we have a window of tolerance we do. So as parents we know talking about how to look after ourselves.
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This window of tolerance is critical isn't to explain.
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Explain it to us.
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So this is really really helpful tool. I think it comes originally from trauma therapy but Lots of mindfulness teachers and coaches have sort of adopted it because it's brilliant. And I can I can send a, we can put it on the, in the podcast notes, because it's a visual thing I've made. And the idea is that we have this window. So we have a band where we kind of go up and down.
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Because that's life. You know, stuff happens, but we can manage it, we can tolerate it, we bounce back. At the top of the band is what we can call like, the red zone where we get stressed, overwhelm, kickoff, rage, whatever terminology you want to use. And that is called hyper arousal. So we weed can't tolerate it anymore, we're probably shouting at this point or raging internally. And at the bottom end is underneath is hypo arousal. And that's the opposite where we shut down feelings of shame, depression, sort of internal stuff. There, some people believe or I think it's, it's true to say that if we stay in the top zone, for too long, then we go into the, to the hypo arousal, the shutdown, because we get to crash the, we can't be in fight flight freeze for that long,we get exhausted. But you can also just go straight into hyper arousal. But the idea behind it, and with mindfulness teaching and awareness teaching is that is to notice when we're at the edge, so when we're about to flip out and go into hyper arousal or hypo arousal, what can we do to take care of ourselves. And that comes from, like, becoming aware of our patterns or habits or reactions, so that we know we have a bigger window where we can make choices, because once you've flipped out and shouting at somebody, you can't really say someone can calm down, you're not going to either. So we have you have a little toolbox, where you know how to bring yourself or your box, or that's all the mindfulness, breathing regulation, knowing that your thoughts aren't facts that they are stuff you're making up. So you have all these awareness tools. And that's, you know, they take practice, but some of them are quick and easy to put into place. So that you can, you can stay more within your window of tolerance, or that you're, or at least be aware when you're at the edge.
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And so the trick really is to become conscious. okay, I'm feeling good right now. Yes. And then try trying to keep yourself in that zone, and no learning what the skills are to keep yourself when you're starting to rise up.
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which we all do, because that's life, and we have teenagers, yes, you're gonna get triggered. And you might have a pattern of maybe you've been depressed before. And that's you can, oh, gosh, that's coming.
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Okay, get these symptoms are coming back. So that you can take better care of yourself and stay more regulated. And in balance, the aim isn't to only stay in the window of tolerance, we're all human, we flip, you know, we go into all of it. But to do it less, because it's exhausting. And it's hard to come back.
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And one of the things that I saw that I thought was actually really helpful was that you can brainstorm. So just when you're not in a horrible moment, to sit down and brainstorm what causes me stress what is making me feel bad? And then look at each of those things and think, Is it a real tiger or a paper tiger? Is this something that genuinely is making my life terrible? And I need to worry about? Or is it something that's stressing me, And I can put this on one side?
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Yeah, brilliant. Burn the paper tiger if you want to. you can't deal with all of them at once as well, because I see lots of parents who say, Oh, I've got this problem. And then when they're giving the backstory, you say, Whoa, there's a lot of things there. So you have
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to pick and then we get massively overwhelmed, and we don't know where to start.
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Yes.
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So you need to pick one thing to deal with at a time again, coming back to our talk about how you make changes.
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You can't buy bite off more than one thing at a time. So pick the other things, put them in a box, or, a pretend plastic tub with a lid on and then just deal with the one thing. Yes.
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And a really important question is and that's also you know, mindfulness, linked with awareness is, what do I need? What do I need in this moment? So we can, we can know that we're overwhelmed, we can know that we're stressed, we can know that maybe things are tricky today. But what do I need and self care? Is brilliant. But I think self care, you know, in the media is very much been adopted, as you know, the luxury bubble bath, which isn't always.
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So if you're really stressed, and you go and run yourself a bubble bath, and you can have the most expensive bubble bath in the world. If you're really stressed and you've got a list of things you need to get sorted. Sometimes that bubble bath will make you feel even worse because you know, you've got to do other things.
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Sometimes it's exactly what you need. But my point is that we need to ask ourselves, what do I need in this moment? Do I need to calm myself down? Do I need to do some breathing practice?
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Do I need to go for a walk? Do I need to? I don't know, go to watch a movie, read a book? Or do I need to actually tidy up that mess in the corner of my kitchen? Because it's doing my head in? Do I need to have that difficult conversation? Write that difficult email, because that will bring me peace. So we need to ask ourselves, what do I need to feel better in this moment? Yes. And another thing we can do is to sort of divide our normal everyday chores or activities into two columns, you can write them down on a piece of paper, actually, and have one side going activities that are nurturing. And on the other side activities that are depleting, and that's kind of talking more about energy rather than stress.
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They're all related, but it's, it feels different anyway. And I do this with clients all the time, and there's often quite a dose of surprise as to how many are on the depleting list. And they can overlap. So for me, if I'm cooking, I love cooking. And I would put that as a nurturing thing. If I'm running out of time, and I don't have time to cook properly, then it becomes depleting. So you know, it can be time dependent or other variables. So they can overlap.
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But having a look afterwards kind of looking, okay, I've got more on my depleting list than I'd like how can I maybe get rid of some or make them shorter or
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well a sample of that, for example, is the cooking, the way that I turned that from depleting where it really used to upset me that I would spend ages in the kitchen cooking, and then people would turn up and they'd be ungrateful, I actually now demand everyone's in the kitchen with me, and they can help. And and in that respect, it now becomes a family event. And, occasionally I'll say, Well, I can see you're working. So you can be somewhere else. But then I don't feel alone.
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No, and that's a really nice activity. Exactly, that so we can turn some of those depleting things. We can't, we can't just not do the depleting things, because I mean, that'd be nice, but we are also adults. Like I hate putting washing away. So sometimes it you know, yeah, just don't do it. Which is also not an option.
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But the nurturing side is, is you know, are there things on there that you could maybe they could take up more space more time or add to so that we're when we're choosing, and it's often the making the list in the first place, that is quite a surprise to people.
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Yeah. And rationing the exposure that you have to negative thoughts and negative media. Because even very brief exposure to negative emotional content activates the stress circuits in the brain causing even more anxiety and gloom. So you know, an angry comment and unpleasant reminder, something your kids have done that whether you know, the bit of back chat or whatever you want to call it, your beliefs and biases can then become self fulfilling. And so the basic protection strategy is minimize the amount of negative things you're getting in a day, because we were talking about this kind of drip, drip, drip, and eventually it will overflow. So what you have to do is, for example, if you're dealing with a lot of negative stuff, don't look at the news, find all the negative things and try and reduce the number that you're exposed to. And the other the flip side on that is if you can focus on acts of warmth and kindness, and think, okay, they've done this, it's really annoying me, have they done anything good? because it can nudge your brain chemistry away from stress and towards a state of calm. And in studies focusing on acts of kindness and social social support. Even those we see performed by strangers in a photograph. Yeah, wow, deactivate that. So you know, just watching a film with people being kind or even just looking at a photograph.
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And from a brain perspective, that is is really important. That's really great advice. Because we already we've talked about this before we have a negative bias, it's because the survival mechanism. So we pick up on the negative stuff.
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And we're doing that in our own heads. The little comments that we chuntering, we're not even aware of, let alone the news. So we have enough negative stuff going around our own making. And we biased, so a learning through mindful awareness that our thoughts are not facts. Most of them we're making up. So learning that practice of questioning your thoughts is this true, or did I just make it up? It's probably a negative bias because that's how we're wired. And then, as you say, trying to rebalance it and we can use nice thoughts or gratitude as it is a really the quickest way to feeling good is gratitude because we're releasing chemicals that are ones the same that are found in antidepressants, by just finding things that you can be thankful for. Just for like a couple of minutes.
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And remember every time you do things like this, what you're doing is modeling this for your teenager it's actually really useful for them.
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Budgeting, the time that you're spending to get things done.
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This is we all do this. We all do this we all think we have more time than We have, and research shows that people habitually underestimate.
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Yeah, how much time they hand up in the air for that. Yeah.
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And also, just remember that teens and kids take longer. So, you know, we think, oh, I need to leave it this time to get and then we've all had that, you know, when we had young kids do you remember you turn up to someone's lunch an hour late, saying it's a lot harder than I thought it was gonna be getting these children out of the door, because but it's still teens are not really as on it as we would hope.
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And, linking that to the idea of timing and time that, that we integrate our self care practices, however you want to call it in into our busy lives. Well, I also think that you know, sometimes self care, and it can be amazing is is is understood as going to a spa, if you're lucky enough to be able to do that, or, you know, taking a chunk of time where you can go and do something with your girlfriends or something which is amazing and wonderful and complete advocate for that it's really important. However, that becomes black and white. So often we do that, and we're really chilled, and it was wonderful. And then we check ourselves back into the frantic chaos again, and then we replenish and it becomes that kind of black and white world.
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So I always teach, you know, integrating these little tiny things into our already busy day. So I always suggest that they use waiting times to practice mindfulness. And it sounds really complicated and abstract, but it what it means is every time you have to wait, so that could be in Sainsbury's, or at the traffic lights or waiting for your teenager to be ready to leave. Anything, it could be waiting for the kettle to boil, you ground yourself. So mindfulness doesn't need to be weird and woowoo it literally means feeling your feet on the ground, and being aware of your breath for maybe a minute or two minutes. And if you do that every time you have to wait, the waiting times the same. You're not adding anything more to your day, but you're suddenly implementing maybe destressing five times a day. And keeping within that window of tolerance.
00:27:08.490 --> 00:27:10.289
Yes. I love it.
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Because you're not packaging it up and saying I'll wait until then to feel better I you can actually integrate it into
00:27:14.670 --> 00:27:20.819
it does help. And you're again showing your teenager that actually you can you you can be regulated Yeah.
00:27:20.940 --> 00:27:23.099
And not get stressed in the queue in Sainsbury's.
00:27:23.220 --> 00:28:15.269
Yeah. And that's perfect. And when bad things happen, reappraising the situation can be incredibly powerful. So in one study, researchers asked college students to spend 15 minutes writing about the most stressful event currently affecting their lives. Then half of those students were told to explore just how it made them feel. And then half of them were asked to also look at the learning opportunities that they got from that experience. And we can do this with our teens as well, then we can do it with ourselves when something awful has happened rather than think, Oh, that was just, I can't believe I was that stupid, or I can't believe it, you know, because we have that negative self talk, we can actually switch this. And what you do is called cognitive reappraisal. And what you do is you say, Okay, I felt this, but I got this from it. It's an important learning experience.
00:28:15.269 --> 00:28:19.319
And now if something similar happens, I'll have a better idea of how to cope with it next time.
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And sometimes it takes a little while to get to the learning, because you need to get over whatever it was.
00:28:24.309 --> 00:28:51.910
Yes, absolutely. One thing I think is important, and it can be a tricky one is that self care isn't the same as numbing out. Yeah, true. So sometimes, you know, we do we're really, really stressed. And then we numb out because it's all a bit overwhelming. And that's, you know, we maybe go for a drink or, or just numb out in front of Netflix for ages. And I'm not saying you should never do that.
00:28:49.660 --> 00:29:26.380
Because that actually sometimes is what you need. So again, it's going back to what do I need, but self care could be doing something creative or, or going for a walk or just doing those things, but it's being present with with whatever's going on, rather than escaping from your life, if that makes any sense. I think sometimes we just kind of go, Oh, it's too much. And then we're trying to just escape from feeling anything. And again, that can be sometimes really lovely and helpful. And I absolutely do that sometimes too. But if that's always your go to that's not the best.
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And when you do feel good don't sabotage it. No.
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Don't suddenly think I don't deserve to feel good. How can I make myself feel bad? You enjoy it and
00:29:36.089 --> 00:29:41.490
isn't it as like a yes, she's always if it everything's going on? You're looking for what's gonna happen?
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Yeah.
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So what do you think? Are you feeling less stress now? Why not help other parents? Tell your friends tell the school set up a support group for other parents of teenagers, where you can listen to and discuss our episodes, share books you read, don't forget to subscribe to our podcast because that helps people to find it and it would be a massive thing. Notice if you left us a review. You can also sign up to receive all the latest set our own website, which is www dot teenager's untangled.com. There's a blog reviews links to every episode and easy ways to contact us both. That's it for now.
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Goodbye. Bye bye for now.
